Geoffrey Reading: A student radical

Tasmania shared in the world crises of the 1930s. The Depression boosted militancy on the Left, there developing most importantly an Unemployed Workers' Movement, with a Communist presence. Throughout, the Labor movement waxed hostility to capitalist pretensions. A G Ogilvie, leader of the parliamentary party from 1929, sympathised with JT Lang, whose similar role in New South Wales aroused passions of hope among his supporters and of hate from his enemies. That link diminished after Ogilvie became Premier in 1934, but his Treasurer (Edmund Dwyer- Gray) and many another Laborite upheld Social Credit, thereby sniping at financial interests and institutions. Trade union militancy found a capable leader in William Morrow, whose bastion was the railway workshops in Launceston. As Ogilvie became more insistent on the need for Australian defence preparedness, Morrow and others on the Left alleged dangers and delusions in that stance. The radical intelligentsia probably sided rather with Morrow than with Ogilvie, but found more compelling issues outside party politics. As throughout Australia, there prevailed anger at the Federal Government's prohibiting the import of many books and otherwise curtailing discussion. Support for the N e w Educational Fellowship and the Free Library Movement responded to this situation.